Film Workflow

[Steve McBride]

I'm currently a student and learning 16mm filming, and I was just wondering the full workflow for film.

 

Right now, all we're doing is getting a 100ft 16mm daylight roll from the school and shoot on it and turn it into the lab guy who sends it out and gets it back and then the editing lab at the school does a (really bad) "telecine" transfer. I get that that is the basic workflow for film, but I was wondering if someone could just layout the entire workflow from getting the film to actually making the print to be projected on screen.

 

Thanks!

[Phil Rhodes]

This sounds enormously like a homework question, but here goes anyway. Since this is a cinematography forum, I'll omit discussion of sound and also intricacies like titles, effects and colour timing which can be done in a variety of ways.

 

Traditional workflow:

 

Shoot and process negative

Make workprint

Cut workprint

Cut negative to match workprint

Make interpositive from cut neg

Make internegative from interpositive

Make prints from internegative.

 

More recent workflow:

 

Shoot and process negative

Make video transfer

Edit video transfer

Cut negative to match video

Make interpositive from cut neg

Make internegative from interpositive

Make prints from internegative.

 

Most recent and current workflow:

 

Shoot and process negative

Make video transfer

Edit video transfer

High-resolution scan of selects

Electronically assemble finished movie

Record finished movie out to film

Make duplicates, either having made an interpos and interneg from the recorded output or, more rarely, having recorded multiple negatives.

 

K?

[Steve McBride]

Thanks a lot for the response. And no, it's not a homework question. My school is more focused on actually shooting projects so I don't have (traditional) homework. Lectures, workshops, and shooting only. And I've been around here long enough that I would feel weird asking professionals to do my homework for me.

Edited October 3, 2009 by Steve McBride

[Nick Hemphill]

I was talking to a fellow student and he said that at his school they would record the projected reel on HD cameras. Easy to do. Maybe better than the telecine transfer.

[Phil Rhodes]

Pointing a camera at a projected image is generally referred to as a film chain, and usually produces results considerably inferior to a telecine.

 

P

[David Regan]

Dominic Case, a regular contributor on here, has a a book: "Film Technology in post production" which I found quite helpful back when I was first trying to figure out workflows.

[Dominic Case]

Thanks for the recommendation, David. The book is still available, and selling steadily, though I suspect there are still a few members of this list who haven't got it ;)

 

Phil's otherwise excellent workflows did leave out a small stage or two in the traditional film flows: after cutting the negative to match work print (or to match digital edit via edl), the neg is colour graded (timed) and an answer print is made for approval. Only after this approval is the interpos made.

 

Similarly in the third model (DI), after "electronically assemble finished movie" there is the colour correction stage.

 

It's worth mentioning these stages as colour correction / grading / timing is something the cinematographer wants to be involved in wherever possible.